Face on the Wall (21 page)

“I had things to do,” Flimnap said softly, and in response to their exclamations of ridicule he said nothing more. He stood stubbornly silent, facing three representatives of the state, highly trained and responsible men who were trying to bring order out of the muddle created by erring humankind. His expression was vacant. He looked sidelong, as if concentrating on quiet words spoken in another room.

Annie watched with mounting anxiety.
Say something, Flimnap, say anything. Why don't you lie?

But Flimnap said nothing.

Frustrated, the four officers moved aside to mutter among themselves, glancing over their shoulders at Flimnap. He was obviously a nutcase, but why the hell would he come back right now, with a police cruiser in the driveway, if the kid's death was his doing? Before long they gave up and left, shaking their heads and promising to come back.

At once Flimnap looked at Annie. “Call your Uncle Homer.”

“Oh, yes,” said Annie, and she plucked the phone off the kitchen wall. Eddy's picture of the White Rabbit was taped to the wall beside it, and for a moment she couldn't see. Then the sound of Mary Kelly's comfortable family voice produced a flood of tears. It was a minute before Annie could explain, and ask for Homer.

“I'll get him. Oh, Annie, my God.”

Homer started for Annie's house at once. He wasn't surprised at what had happened, because Mary's niece was always getting into some kind of terrible trouble. But now his affection for the girl rose up and hit him hard. Poor old Annie!

As he headed down Route 2, he saw the police ambulance coming toward him, and he swore under his breath. He was too late. He had missed getting a look at the poor kid lying exactly where he had fallen. It was too bad. Homer had a theory that the first glance at a scene of trouble could tell you everything, if you could only register it on your brain and sort it out.

With Mary's key he unlocked Annie's door and walked into her big living room. It was empty. The scaffolding still lay in a clutter of fallen boards on the floor. Homer glanced up at the storytellers on Annie's wall. There were a lot more of them than he remembered. They stood in clusters, serenely disregarding the wreckage below. Their arcaded gallery was like a splendid extension of the room, an opening into another world, in which the death of one small boy was an insignificant event. Homer tore his eyes away. Where was Annie? Where was Whoseywhatsis, Flimnap?

He crossed the hall and lifted his hand to knock on Annie's bedroom door, but she opened it at once and clutched him. “Oh, Uncle Homer.”

Homer had known Annie ever since she was an excitable little girl skipping rope on the grass in front of the old farmhouse on Barrett's Mill Road. It just happened to be the house in which a tall young woman named Mary Morgan was living with her sister and brother-in-law. Now Homer held Annie close and murmured in her ear, “It's okay, honey. Tell me what the hell happened.”

“The door was locked,” sobbed Annie. “They were both locked. I swear they were locked.”

“Okay, Annie, it's all right.” He pushed her gently down on the bed and pulled up a chair. “Tell me.”

“He's going to sue me. And his wife is a litigation lawyer. She works for Pouch, Heaviside and Sprocket. They'll sue me for everything I've got, that's what he said.”

“Pouch, Heaviside and Sprocket! Christ almighty, they're the sleaziest dirtballs in Boston. I've had a few grim encounters with them myself. Homer shook his head in melancholy wonder. “Look here, tell me about Eddy. Tell me everything you can remember about that poor little kid.”

Annie began haltingly, then caught her breath and hurried on. She began with Eddy's delight in the stories she had been painting on her wall. “He loved to come here and hear about Little Red Riding Hood and, you know, the Emperor's nightingale and all the rest, and look at the wall.”
Whassat, Anniei? Whassat?

Homer had a sinking feeling. “He liked your wall?”

“Oh, yes. I doubt his parents ever read to him. He was hungry for stories. And, listen, Homer, I'm convinced they were trying to kill him. You know, without actually using a gun or anything.” Annie told Homer about Eddy's horrifying ride down the hill in one of the Gasts' cars. “Actually, it was an extra car, an old wreck of a car, not one they used very much.”
Only when they wanted to make a certain kind of impression on their future landlady,
thought Annie bitterly. “They wouldn't have wanted to destroy one of their good cars. So they encouraged Eddy to play in this old car. I'll bet they released the brake themselves.”

“You don't know that for certain. Where's the car now?”

“I don't know.”

Homer looked at Annie sadly. “You said Eddy liked your wall?”

“Oh, yes. He wanted to know about everything, the hare and the tortoise, Wilbur the pig, Peter Rabbit. He wanted me to tell him all the stories.” Annie looked at Homer with tears in her eyes. “That was when it all began. Listen, Homer, this is the plain truth. That little kid, you've seen what he could do.” She pointed at the wall beside her bed where she had hung some of Eddy's paintings, newly matted and framed. “I gave him good paints and good paper, and look at the marvelous things he did with them. His death is such a waste. Oh, God, Homer, do you think it was my fault?”

Grimly Homer took her hand and squeezed it. “Carry on. Tell me more.”

“He began to come here. Almost every day he'd show up at the door. If it was locked, he'd knock. If it wasn't, he'd just walk in. Once he came in the middle of the night.”

“Did he ever come when you weren't here?”

“Yes, once or twice. Once I came home and found him up on the scaffolding, like—like today.” Annie got up and reached for her box of tissues and mopped at her face. “That was when I began locking the doors whenever I went out. Oh, I always lock the front door, but at first I didn't bother with the other one. Then, after Eddy got in that day, I began locking that too.”

“What about Flimnap? Did he have a key? Was he here sometimes when you were out?”

“Yes, he had a key, and of course he was often here when I was out. You'll have to ask him about Eddy.”

Homer stared at Eddy's glowing pictures and said slowly, “He was fascinated by what you were doing? You were enriching his life, discovering the artist in him?”

“Yes, that's right, that's right! He was thirsty for it. And I helped him. I was glad and grateful to help him, he was so gifted.”

Homer's melancholy deepened. “Annie, you're making it worse, don't you see? The more he wanted to come here, the more you look like an attractive nuisance. They'll say you enticed him here to his peril.”

“That's what Bob Gast said just now. But I didn't, I didn't. Oh, God, perhaps I did, only it wasn't to his peril, it was just the opposite.”

It was worse and worse. Homer shook his head. There was no comfort to be had. “Look here, you're going to need a good defense attorney. If they really do sue you, I'll try to persuade Jerry Neville to take your case. He's given up active practice to write a book, but he's the best trial lawyer in Middlesex County. Or the entire country, or maybe the world.”

Chapter 33

… at every step you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow.

Hans Christian Andersen, “The Little Mermaid”

“B
ob?”

There was a pause, and then Bob Gast said, “Here.”

“Hey, are you okay? You sound kind of strange.”

“I'm okay.” Gast pulled himself together. “What is it?”

“Pearl's signature, I've got it. She signed the release.”

“She signed? Well, fine. Send it to me, okay?”

“Well, sure, only I've got to make copies. It may be a few days.”

“You're sure she signed? No kidding?”

“Oh, sure, she signed.” Fred Small stared at the practice sheet in front of him, on which he had at last perfected the swift upright signature of his murdered wife. “I've got it right here in front of me.”

In the woods in Northtown, Flimnap knew a trail leading back into the thickest growth of trees, where tall white pines grew out of a cellarhole. No other trace of the original house remained. Had the farmer abandoned it to pan for gold in California? There were still a couple of spindly lilac bushes beside the hole.

On his second day in the woods Flimnap ventured out for a
Boston Globe
, and found a mention of Eddy's death on page 43. The story included a picture of the Gast family in happier days—a grinning Bob, a smiling Roberta, a beaming Charlene, and a solemn Eddy. Annie's painted wall was mentioned, and so was the rolling scaffolding, but there was no picture of Annie and no accusation of carelessness on her part. There was nothing in the article about keys, nothing about a handyman called Flimnap O'Dougherty.

Flimnap stayed in the Northtown woods through fourteen
Boston Globes
, just to be on the safe side. He spent his time exploring the remoter parts of the wilderness, identifying shrubs and trees and looking for wildflowers. One day, in a sheltered corner under a rocky cliff, far from the place where he had parked his truck, he found something unexpected. He stopped short and heaved aside a pile of dead branches. Then, grimly, he went back to his truck for a shovel.

The long creamy envelope appeared in Annie's mail precisely one week after the death of Eddy Gast. The return address was menacing—“Pouch, Heaviside and Sprocket, Attorneys at Law, 7 Federal Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02108.”

She read the terrible paragraph within the envelope, dropped the letter on the floor, and snatched up the phone. “Two million, Uncle Homer. They're suing me for two million dollars.”

“Two million!” There was a horrified pause, and then Homer said angrily, “Isn't it interesting the way some people maximize their good fortune? Not only did the Gasts get rid of their embarrassing little son, they mean to get rich at the same time.”

“But that's what's so awful, Uncle Homer.
They
were the ones who were careless. It was almost as if they wanted him to get lost, or—listen, did I tell you what happened on Route
2
?” Annie described the near-accident on the highway, when Eddy had almost been run over. Then her voice faltered. “He was coming after me, I'm afraid. I told him I was going to Cambridge, so he walked all the way through the woods to Route 2. He was trying to follow me to Cambridge. But, Uncle Homer, it wasn't my fault. It was because they didn't watch over him. They didn't care what happened to Eddy.”

Homer's heart dropped into his shoes. It was worse than ever. The boy had obviously been fixated on Annie. “Look,” he said, “I'll call Jerry Neville right away.”

“Listen, Uncle Homer, I've got insurance. I've got a big personal-injury policy. Won't that cover it?”